Orkney’s Erland Cooper

We teamed up with Queen’s Hall and Highland Park whisky to bring Edinburgh a very special performance by Orkney’s multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Erland Cooper for the launch of his second solo album, Sule Skerry.

Having grown up in Stromness on the Orkney Islands, Cooper explores the natural world of birds, sea and landscape in an immersive evening of music, words and imagery.

Cooper played tracks from his seminal record Solan Goose and performed new material from his forthcoming album, Sule Skerry. The good folks at Highland Park, the world-renowned Orkney single malt whisky, stocked the bar with their 12 Year Old Viking Honour malt.

Originally part of The Magnetic North and Erland & The Carnival, Cooper has a diverse musical history.

His acclaimed solo album Solan Goose (2018) was an Album of the Year at BBC Radio 6Music, the Quietus, musicOMH and more. An ode to escapism, Cooper wrote the album to ease the anxieties of working in a busy city through soothing piano, strings, electronics and wild bird calls, with its tracks each taking their titles from Orcadian dialect words for birds.

The second album of his Orkney triptych, Sule Skerry, was released in May, taking the North Sea as its narrative focus.